Bio

Welcome! These pages contain general information about Abbie Goldberg’s research, teaching, and professional interests, and links to more detailed information about these topics.

Abbie E. Goldberg is a Professor of Psychology and Director of Women’s and Gender Studies at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. She received her BA in psychology from Wesleyan University, and an MA in psychology and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research examines diverse families, including lesbian- and gay-parent families and adoptive-parent families. A central theme of her research is the decentering of any “normal” or “typical” family, sexuality, or gender, to allow room for diverse families, sexualities, and genders.

For 13 years, Dr. Goldberg has been conducting a longitudinal study of adoptive families headed by female, male, and heterosexual couples, which focuses in part on parents’ and children’s experiences in the school setting. Dr. Goldberg is also conducting research on the higher educational experiences of trans and gender-nonconforming individuals. Dr. Goldberg recently completed a longitudinal study of postpartum well-being in women with diverse sexual histories. She is the author of over 100 peer-reviewed articles and two books: Gay Dads (NYU Press, 2012) and Lesbian- and Gay-Parent Families (APA, 2010). She is the co-editor (with Katherine R. Allen) of LGBT-Parent Families: Innovations in Research and Implications for Practice (Springer, 2013) and the editor of the SAGE Encyclopedia of LGBTQ Studies (SAGE, 2016). She is also the co-editor of a forthcoming book, LGBTQ Divorce and Relationship Dissolution (Oxford, 2018). She has received research funding from the American Psychological Association, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Williams Institute, the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, the National Institutes of Health, and the Spencer Foundation. She teaches courses on family diversity, research methods with diverse families, human sexuality, the psychology of sexual orientation, and ethics in clinical psychology.